Mill Town Girl

by Audrey Reimann

  Churchwall Street, where Carrie had lived for the last six years, was halfway between the market square and the cattle market in Waters Green. One end of Churchwall Street opened on to Churchwallgate, the other end on to the Hundred and Eight steps. Her own backyard had, ten feet below it, the backyard of one of the big houses of Waters Green.

  Waters Green comprised the cattle market and the open space in front of the railway station. Churchwallgate rose steeply from Waters Green to the market square. There was a bakery, a smithy and soon there would be an omnibus station. The cattle market was only used for selling cattle on Tuesdays. On Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays, Waters Green and Churchwallgate were filled with market stalls.

  The river Bollin flowed, swift and stained with dye, between the railway line and the mills. It must have been the river, Carrie thought, which had given the lower market its name of Waters Green, for there wasn’t a blade of grass to be seen.

  It would be a champion place to open her Temperance Hotel. There’d be business coming in, from the railway, and farmers wanting breakfasts and dinners on market days. It should do better than the old place in the market square. And it would redeem her in her father’s eyes, if he was watching, knowing that she had kept her promise to him, making a new haven of sobriety or whatever it was he’d called it.

  The Waters Green house that backed up against her cottage was a lodging-house and the old couple wanted to sell. They’d told her they were getting too old for it, but Carrie knew better. They couldn’t make money – that was their trouble.

  It was getting dark. Here in Churchwall Street the light went early, though the morning sun beamed directly into her rooms. It was November and cold. Outside, in the yard, leaves from the sycamores in the churchyard lay in damp profusion. She’d sweep them in the morning.

  Right now she concentrated on the figures in front of her, her eyes inches from the sheet of paper as she made her calculations. She sat straight and let out a big sigh. A smile crossed her face. She had enough; enough to buy the place in the bottom market. Wells Management, as she was called on paper, had one thousand nine hundred pounds in balance in the District Bank in Manchester where prying Macclesfield eyes wouldn’t know about it. The money was from rents, interest on rents and the two houses she’d sold. There was fifty pounds in five-pound notes under the bread-crock on the cellar steps waiting to be put into the account and a good two hundred pounds worth of jewellery if she had to sell it.

  There was enough coming in for her never to have to work again if that was what she wanted. She could live here in the tiny cottage and still be able to give help to those who needed it; Jane and Danny and, here in Churchwall Street, Mrs Gallimore’s married daughter Brenda and her ever-growing family. But she wouldn’t do that. She would make more money. She did not want to sell any of her property, though. She liked buying property. It gave her a sense of proud ownership, knowing that some of the houses in Macclesfield belonged to her. She had a good legal man in Manchester too, who would buy for her under the name of Wells Management whenever she was ready.

  She was full of energy; always had been. She needed to work and she wanted the standing that another Temperance Hotel would give to her. She opened her cupboard and set a cup, saucer and plate on the table. Then she reached down to the hearth and took hold of the red cotton kettle-holder that Rose had knitted. She used it to place the filled kettle over the coals on the swinging-trivet. Then she scooped tea into her silver teapot and sat back to wait for the kettle to boil.

  It was lovely, remembering Rose’s little face when she’d given her the kettle-holder; her first piece of knitting. Yet she, herself, was afraid of responding too warmly to the child, afraid that her feelings would overwhelm her. So she had to fight back the impulse to hold the little one to her; had to signal to Jane to distract the child’s attention; had to stand by and watch Rose give to Jane what Carrie knew should be hers, the love and trust of her own daughter. And she had to fight back her jealousy.

  The tea was ready and, as she drank, Carrie turned her thoughts from Rose and smiled with satisfaction to think that the Potts family wanted to sell her old property back to her. But she wouldn’t take it. Not even for what they’d offered it to her for – two hundred pounds less than they’d paid. She wouldn’t want to live there again, remembering all the time.

  Anyway, Carrie thought, the marketplace wasn’t what it had been. There was a labour exchange in the square now, and always a queue of men outside.

  It was awful to see them, and see the mills closing down or going on short-time. Some of the men had been in the war; many were on crutches, others still coughing up from the gassings, and some of them reduced to begging. There was one who was propped against the side of an entry; he had no legs. His wife wheeled him in every morning and left him sitting all day with his old cap on the flagstones in front of him. And there was the blind man who begged near the station.

  Well, there’d be a job for someone when she left the mill. She’d be glad to go. She’d never taken to millwork, though Cecil Ratcliffe from the chapel had found her a good job; supervising in his brother-in-law’s factory. Her eyes weren’t really up to much close work. If her sight went she’d be able to manage a lodging-house. And when Rose was a big girl she’d come and live with her.

  Alan was happy to have Rose come round to see him in Lincoln Drive but never felt as comfortable at her house. Unlike his own home, where he never heard voices raised, the Wells Road household rang with chatter, laughter and argument; Rose’s house was usually filled with joyful sound, though he felt a quick drop in spirits whenever their Aunt Carrie came in.

  When the aunt arrived unexpectedly he could feel her eyes chilling him, making him feel that he had done wrong and he would depart quickly before she asked, ‘Isn’t it time the McGregor lad went home for his tea?’

  He’d see the blush come to Rose’s cheeks, for shame at her aunt’s words, if he didn’t leave before she uttered them, and he felt sorry for Rose who seemed to feel the weight of her aunt’s attention. He spoke to his father about it but his father merely smiled and said, ‘Aye. She’s a crabbit old hen. Let the wee lassie come round here then.’

  But today they were far away from Macclesfield, Rose and Aunt Carrie. Dad put his arm around Alan’s shoulder as they sat on the harbour wall in the long Scottish twilight. Together they watched the sun sink in a sheet of flame behind the mountains and the sky above turn from gold to crimson and purple, listening as the inky water at the back of the wall slapped gently against the painted sides of the boats.

  The holiday was over. Tomorrow they’d come down to the shore before the sun was up for a last look at the pewter sea and silver sky and Alan would push his bare feet into pale shaking sand where fast waves foamed against the wide beach.

  Dad was a sailor in his bones. He’d told Alan that in his heart he always would be. He loved the sea and the people of the village; the men who spoke a tongue Alan could not understand and the strong women who walked barefoot at dawn to the nearby town, carrying heavy creels of fish and calling their wares in harsh, plaintive voices. Alan wondered if his mother had done the same, for she’d been a fisherman’s wife.

  ‘Back to Macclesfield tomorrow, son.’ Dad stood up and felt in the pocket of his old jacket for his pipe and tobacco pouch. ‘Will you be sorry?’

  ‘I like it here, Dad, but I want to get back home. To see Nan and Rose and go up to the farm, maybe.’ Alan was tall for nine; a skinny lad of enormous energy and quick intelligence. His brown eyes were alive with anticipation and, try as he might, he could not conceal his excitement at the prospect of the long train journey ahead.

  ‘Will we stay overnight in Edinburgh?’ he asked and saw with relief that his father grinned between tamping the tobacco and drawing the flame slowly over the round bowl of his pipe.

  ‘Aye. We’ll bide a night in Auld Reekie.’

  ‘And climb Arthur’s Seat and look for aeroplanes?’ Alan added.

 
‘Och aye,’ his father replied. ‘What a laddie! Is the sea no enough for you that you want to fly now?’ But he was still smiling as Alan followed behind the big broad back of his father to the cluster of whitewashed cottages beyond the high-water mark.

  Dad opened the latch on the backyard gate of Aunt Isa’s house and waited for him to pass under his arm.

  ‘You’ll need an early night, son. We’ll be off at the crack o’ dawn,’ he said. ‘Get yourself up the stairs when you’ve had your supper.’

  ‘Will you come up for a talk, Dad?’ Alan asked. ‘And read the letter from my godfather, again?’

  ‘Aye. Of course I will.’

  Dad would sometimes sit on the end of his bed and listen to him, and now and then tell of times gone by, before Alan was born. This evening Dad would tell the familiar story again, the way Alan liked to hear it, as if he were reading from a book. Then he would read the letter Patrick had sent from Canada where he and Uncle John McGregor had sailed to.

  Alan waited until Dad had smoked his pipe, out on the ‘little green’ as Aunt Isa called the tiny patch of grass at the back of the cottage.

  He heard Dad’s feet on the narrow wooden stair and watched him duck his head through the low doorway. He pulled himself up against the pillows and wrapped his arms around his knees as the tale unfolded. Alan always felt unaccountably angry when Dad got to the part where his mother died. He wanted to know how it was she had died. Had he killed her? How could a healthy young woman die in childbirth when he’d seen sheep and cows give birth safely?

  Then he always wanted to laugh when Dad told him about finding Nan Tansley. He was so glad that they had found her.

  ‘Well, Alan. Is that enough?’ Douglas had come to the end of the story. ‘You don’t want all the bits you can remember, do you?’

  ‘No,’ Alan answered. ‘Read Patrick’s letter now, will you?’

  Douglas took a fat, crumpled envelope from his jacket pocket and laid the pages on the counterpane, grinned at Alan and began.

  Dear Douglas and Godson,

  John McGregor and I have decided to seek our fortune in Canada. We sailed across the Tasman Sea from Sydney to Auckland, New Zealand. There we booked two berths on an iron floored mailboat to Vancouver.

  Three days out from Auckland we arrived in Suva, Fiji. Hot, like steaming soup was Suva. We were thirsty all the time and were given wooden bowlfuls of a drink that tastes like soapy water. It was their national drink, Kaava; made from fermented coconut.

  The Pacific is vast, yet centuries ago the Polynesians crossed it, paddling canoes laden with women and children. It took us a week to sail from Fiji to the pretty Hawaiian Islands in a heaving, pitching sea. But when we arrived the weather was hot and calm and the dusky young maidens of Honolulu waded out to us through a turquoise sea to bring leis – garlands of paper flowers – to hang around our necks.

  We hired a taxi and saw the island; sugar cane and pineapple plantations; two thousand foot cliffs – so tall that their tops were lost in a greenish mist – that dropped sheer into the deep blue sea.

  Now we are here, just docked in the sparkling waters of Vancouver Sound, looking across to tall skyscrapers with steep, blue, wooded mountains beyond them. We shall stay here for a few days before we go on the Canadian Pacific Railway to Winnipeg where John wants to look up the Canadian McGregor clan.

  ‘It makes you want to see it all, doesn’t it, Dad?’ Alan said when his father had reached the end.

  ‘Aye. He makes places seem real, the way he describes them,’ Dad said. ‘Will you want to sail or to fly when you’re a man, laddie?’

  ‘I’m going to be a doctor when I grow up,’ Alan said eagerly. ‘I’m going to save mothers like Nat Cooper and his father do with cows and sheep. I’ve watched them being born, Dad, and I’ve never seen one die.’

  ‘You don’t owe your life to anyone, Alan,’ Douglas said, ‘and you’ve a long way to go before you make your mind up.’ He ruffled Alan’s hair affectionately. ‘Get some sleep now. Good night.’

  Alan did not understand what Dad meant about not owing his life to anyone. He’d always wanted to be a doctor, ever since he’d held a bleating new-born lamb for Nat and watched Nat bring the ewe back from the edge of death. After Nat had pulled the other, dead lamb out of the ewe he’d heaved the mother on to her feet again and they’d given her the lamb Alan had held. Alan had felt tears of relief running down his face when the mother sheep began to lick the lamb and nudge the poor fumbling creature until it was in the right place to drink from her.

  He didn’t want to be a vet in case he had to destroy animals. A doctor was what he’d be – or a pilot. He knelt on his bed and watched the sky, which would lighten into dawn in a few hours. He couldn’t sleep for thinking about the coming day when they’d cross the three long spans and great steel trusses of the Forth Rail Bridge. He and Dad would leave their bags, walk down the Royal Mile into Holyrood Park and climb the big mountain right to the top.

  From the summit they’d be able to see the city spread out around their feet and he’d take Dad’s field glasses and look for the Tiger Moths and Sopwiths he’d seen flying from the airfield the last time they were there and he’d beg Dad to let him go up for a pleasure flight.

  Chapter Seven

  Aunt Carrie didn’t like any of them to have friends outside the family, especially Rose, who simply wanted Aunt Carrie to like her best friend, Alan. Rose told her aunt that Mary and Vivienne had one another and didn’t need friends but that she had nobody to play with, only Alan. But Aunt Carrie still went into one of her moods when she saw him.

  It was nearly time for Rose’s first communion and Mum was making a beautiful white dress for her. The material was cotton lawn. When it was finished she was going to show it to Alan.

  Every day at one o’clock Mum placed a Windsor chair near the big cupboard that reached from the floor to the ceiling of the living room. The oak-stained cupboard fitted in beside the fireplace and its top had doors, while below were set four deep drawers. They called the top shelf the Secret Shelf because nobody was tall enough to reach it and they didn’t own stepladders. Mum had to pull out the drawers to form steps or climb from the chair into the top drawer. Today she climbed up from the chair and fished with the mat-beater until the parcel flew out into the room to be caught by Rose.

  ‘Got it, Mum!’ Rose called as the pillowcase containing her dress landed in her open hands.

  Mum was slight and very thin and Rose held her breath as her mother felt gingerly behind herself for the seat of the chair. ‘You’re there,’ she said, laughing as Mum hopped down on to the rag mat.

  ‘Take your blouse off, darling,’ Mum said. ‘I want to fit the bodice before you go back to school.’

  Rose unbuttoned her winceyette blouse and stood, arms outstretched, keeping still so as not to feel the little cold pins touching her skin as Mum tugged and frowned over the task of fitting the pieces.

  ‘Why do you have to hide it, Mum?’ she asked. ‘Doesn’t Aunt Carrie know you’re making my dress?’

  ‘No,’ Mum mumbled behind the spokes of pins that were firmly clamped between her lips.

  ‘Why would she be angry? Because she hates Roman Catholics?’ Rose asked.

  Mum unpinned the bodice and laid the pieces carefully on the clean pillowcase, over the top of the treadle sewing machine that was her pride and joy. She took Rose by the shoulders and turned her round to face her. ‘Don’t talk like that, Rose,’ she said. ‘Your aunt and I were brought up Chapel. I wanted to be Catholic when I got married, to be like your Dad, but Aunt Carrie thinks the Church made me change.’

  Rose loved Aunt Carrie and it seemed to her that if only Aunt Carrie went to St Albans and listened to the sisters, she would be happy all the time. Rose felt the hot tears welling up behind her eyes. She put her arms around Mum’s neck.

  ‘I wish Aunt Carrie was a Catholic too, Mum. I wish she came to our church.’

  They did not see the kitchen door op
en. They had forgotten that Aunt Carrie was coming to the house after she’d been tested for new glasses and it was Mum who first lifted her head from Rose’s tight hold and flinched at the sight of her sister who stood, white-faced, watching them.

  ‘So this is what goes on when I’m out, is it?’ Aunt Carrie spoke in the ominous voice they knew sometimes foretold a burst of bitter rage. ‘You talk about me behind my back, do you?’

  ‘Carrie – we’re only—’ Mum straightened up.

  ‘Mum’s making my communion dress, Aunt Carrie,’ Rose said with a boldness that was mostly pretence, for a rule of her aunt’s was that she must not answer back. ‘We’re fitting it before I go back to school.’

  ‘Is that so, my fine girl?’ Aunt Carrie pushed the door to behind her and came to where they were standing. She snatched up the cut-out pieces, pins and pillowcase and threw them into the fire, pushing the bodice into the red coals with the poker. ‘We’ll see about that.’

  Aunt Carrie was fiery, not pretty like Mum, and now, when her cheeks were going red and the blue eyes behind the thick lenses flashed, Rose’s confidence left her and she began to cry. She was afraid that Aunt Carrie would strike them. Sometimes her aunt lifted her hand as if she was going to hit out. She wished Dad were here. Aunt Carrie was never like this when Dad was at home.

  ‘And what’s this I hear about you playing with the McGregor lad?’ She bent down, pulled Rose’s hands away from her face and looked into her eyes. ‘Who said you could go playing with strangers?’

  ‘He’s not a stranger. He’s my friend,’ Rose protested through her tears. ‘He’s my best friend.’ This seemed to infuriate Aunt Carrie even more but she turned from her to Mum.

  ‘Put your things on. Get yourself back to school,’ she said to Rose, over her shoulder. ‘Your Mum and I have some talking to do.’